By Tiernan Ray

Here are some things going on this morning in your world of tech:

Cisco Systemsannounced it will spend $1 billion over two years to build an “intercloud,” as it calls the effort, in partnership with carriers such as Telstra and Allstream, and a variety of other tech firms, such as Ingram Micro (IM). The project will be based on the OpenStack freely available virtualization and storage software that many Internet services have been taking up at a rapid pace; it will also use SAP’s (SAP) Hana in-memory database. Some of the services will be hosted by Cisco itself in its data centers, including some “platform as a service” and “infrastructure as a service,” two common that companies such as Amazon.com (AMZN) and Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT).

Nick Earle of Cisco, who is a senior vice president for cloud sales, tells me that there will be three buckets of spend inside Cisco for the billion dollars, including engineering, building out Cisco’s own data centers that will host and sell the Cisco cloud services, and third, the go-to-market organization of several hundred people to work alongside Cisco’s 20,000-strong sales force. Earle likened the effort to the “Star Alliance” cooperative deal between the airlines.

Regarding Amazon and Google, Earle said the two were not really at the application layer, a hole in their offering that he said Cisco could fill with things such as SAP’s Hana, or Microsoft’s Office365 product. Earle said Cisco’s 65,000 resellers around the world help Cisco get to scale much quicker, in part by hosting the service, in part by packing it for other vertical markets.

More details at Cisco’s “Cisco Live,” the company’s partner conference, in May.

Cisco shares are off 12 cents, or 0.6%, at $21.52.

In case you missed it, Apple (AAPL) is working with Comcast (CMCSA) to develop a streaming video set-top box service, according to a piece over the weekend by The Wall Street Journal’s Shalini Ramachandran, Daiuske Wakabayashi, and Amol Sharma, citing multiple unnamed sources.

The service, which is not close to an agreement, the authors write, is distinguished by Apple’s intention to have special use of last-mile connections to stream video at a higher quality than services such as Netflix’s (NFLX).

Speaking of Apple, Pacific Crest’s Andy Hargreaves today reiterates an Outperform rating on Apple stock, and a $635 price target, writing that his “checks” of component suppliers and carrier stores suggests “iPhone unit volume could exceed our estimates of 39.7 million in March and 33.6 million in June.” Hargreaves thinks “replacement rates remain extremely strong and that Apple is gaining share of high-end customers.”

Speaking still further of Apple, DigiTimes’s Aaron Lee and Joseph Tsaithis morning write that the company intends to have batteries for the iPhone made on fully-automated production lines this year “to reduce its manpower demand,” citing multiple unnamed sources. The move is in response to rising wages in China, among other factors, the authors write.

Apple stock is up $3.93, or 0.7%,a t $536.80.

Shares of Pandora (P), meantime, are down $3.02, or almost 9%, at $30.99, after Billboard late Friday reported Apple is considering offering a version of its iTunes Radio service on Google’s Android operating system, according to TheFlyontheWall.

Shares of LG Display (LPL) are down 4 cents at $12.10, despite a bullish note from Nomura Equity Research’s James Kim, who raised his rating on the shares to Buy from Neutral, with a ₩36,000 on the ordinary shares traded in Seoul (034220KS), from a prior ₩24,000, writing that prices for television panels have bottomed this month, and that inventories have stabilized, while TV panel average size is set to rise on the backs of ultra-Hi Def set sales. Kim also believes “a new smartphone launch from its biggest customers in 3Q,” likely a reference to Apple, should boost sales.

Shares of NetApp (NTAP) are down $1.54, or 4%, at $36.26, after Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty cut her rating on the stock to Underweight from Equal Weight because of pressure from the “Three Cs” as she calls it: cloud, compression, competition, which are cutting spending on storage equipment. She cut her revenue expectation for the fiscal year ending April of 2015 to $6.14 billion from a prior $6.24 billion, estimate, below consensus of $6.54 billion. Huberty believes EMC (EMC) is doing a better job weathering those storms given a broader product portfolio.

Chip maker Nvidia (NVDA) will tomorrow host its analyst day briefing, and some Street observers are revving up their models for what to expect. MKM Partners’s Ian Ing reiterates a Neutral rating on the shares, writing that the “core” business “is strong (GeForce GPUs for gaming) plus there are “irons in the fire,” in GPUs (automotive) and in Tegra (K1 mobile supercomputing). However, Nvidia’s wireless investment remains a stubborn overhang and we believe Tegra 4i (4G) and GRID GPUs (cloud) have room to disappoint.”

About Tech Trader Daily

Tech Trader Daily is a blog on technology investing written by Barron’s veteran Tiernan Ray. The blog provides news, analysis and original reporting on events important to investors in software, hardware, the Internet, telecommunications and related fields. Comments and tips can be sent to: techtraderdaily@barrons.com.